Whatever happened to Iraq? How the media lost interest in a long-running war with no end in sight

American Journalism Review, June-July, 2008 by Sherry Ricchiardi

Both journalists point to cause and effect: The public tends to take cues from the media about what is important. If Iraq is pushed to a back burner, the signal is clear--the war no longer is a top priority. It follows that news consumers lose interest and turn their attention elsewhere. The Pew study found exactly that: As news coverage of the war diminished, so too did the public interest in Iraq.

Ellen Hume, research director at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media and a former journalist, believes the decline in Iraq news could be linked to a larger issue--profits. "The problem doesn't seem to be valuing coverage of the war; it's more about the business model of journalism today and what that market requires," Hume says.

"There is no sense that [the media] are going to be able to meet the numbers that their corporate owners require by offering news about a downer subject like Iraq. It's a terrible dilemma for news organizations."

Still, there has been some stunningly good reporting on Iraq over the past year.

Two of the Washington Post's six Pulitzer Prizes were warrelated. Anne Hull and Dana Priest won the public service award for revealing the neglect of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (see Drop Cap, April/May 2007). Steve Fainaru won in the international reporting category for an examination of private security contractors in Iraq.

McClatchy's Baghdad bureau chief, Leila Fadel, collected the George R. Polk Award for outstanding foreign reporting. Judges offered high praise for her vivid depictions of the agonizing plight of families in ethnically torn neighborhoods.

CBS took two Peabody Awards, one for Scott Pelley's report on the killings of civilians in the Iraqi city of Haditha (see "A Matter of Time," August/September 2006) on "60 Minutes," another for Kimberly Dozier's report about two female veterans who lost limbs in Iraq on "CBS News Sunday Morning." Dozier herself was wounded in Iraq in May 2006.

ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff, who was injured in Iraq in January 2006, received a Peabody Award for "Wounds of War," a series of reports about injured veterans.

There have been a series of groundbreaking investigations over the past year. In one of the most recent, the New York Times' David Barstow documented how the Pentagon cultivated military analysts to generate favorable news for the Bush administration's wartime performance. Many of the talking heads, including former generals, were being coached on what to tell viewers on television.

The Times continues to have a dominant presence on the ground in Iraq, sinking millions into maintaining its Baghdad complex, home and office to six or seven Western correspondents and a large Iraqi staff. Foreign Editor Chira says it has been more challenging to recruit people to go to Baghdad, but "we remain completely committed to maintaining a robust presence in Iraq."

Those are notable exceptions; no doubt there are more. But overall, Iraq remains the biggest nonstory of the day unless major news is breaking.